


Magnus Mondays

by Voidfish



Series: Bad Brain Good Drabbles [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Suicidal Ideation, canon character death, magnus burnsides centric, mostly hurt but also comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 02:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11476575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Voidfish/pseuds/Voidfish
Summary: Some people deserve to be protected and some people deserve to protect. It’s just the natural order of things. There are people who cuddle and people who are cuddled, people who serve and people who are fed, and people who hurt to protect others from hurting. Magnus Burnsides knows his place in the world. He’s learned it from a young age.____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Magnus Burnsides hates himself more than he'd like to admit/





	Magnus Mondays

**Author's Note:**

> Major warning for suicidal ideation!!! Like, that's what the whole thing is about please be safe!!!  
> Magnus Burnsides is a very relatable person.  
> My Magnus is always a trans guy and autistic. I am allistic, so please let me know if I did anything incorrectly, I will fix it.

Some people deserve to be protected and some people deserve to protect. It’s just the natural order of things. There are people who cuddle and people who are cuddled, people who serve and people who are fed, and people who hurt to protect others from hurting. Magnus Burnsides knows his place in the world. He’s learned it from a young age.

***

Magnus Burnsides discovered before ten that he couldn’t do anything. And it was fine, because at ten he found what he could do. He had no subtlety and stealth, no magical ability, no devotion, no musical ability, no gift or calling, but he had his body to give as sacrifice. It started with the stray dog that he saved. He could handle bruises and sprains and the sore ache of his body if it meant that someone who was innocent could walk away. If someone who could do something better could walk away from whatever he decided to take on for them.

He trained, he focused his energy into his new ambition. _Burnsides is such a freak!_ Fifty sit-ups. _She can’t even tell we don’t want to hang out with her_. One hundred jumping jacks. _She._ Two minutes on the punching bag. Magnus’s hands grew sore, and then they calloused, and then they grew strong. And now he had something that he could do. He could fight.

***

It was Julia that mentioned it first. She had let him stay at her place after the protest-his place was probably swarming by now. Julia had gotten some hits and throws done quietly and without attention, but everyone saw Magnus ram Kalen’s secretary and he was probably a criminal right now. Julia was tending to his black eye.

“Why did you step in front of me?”

“You were about to get punched.” Magnus said.

Julia frowned. “I saw him. I was about to block him. Magnus, you could have gotten really hurt.” She sounded so concerned. As if she didn’t know why he did it.

The subject was making Magnus uncomfortable, but he continued because he knew that Julia would never give it up. “It’s just a black eye, I’ve had worse.”

“That’s not the point,” Julia grunted as she tried to place an icepack on Magnus’s eye. He squirmed, but let her help. “We’re about to go into a rebellion, Magnus, and you’re already becoming associated with it. You have to be more careful about what kind of hits you’re gonna take.”

“But that means someone else is gonna get hurt,” Magnus whined.

The hand handling him paused, and when Julia looked up there was something soft and scared in her expression. He had no idea why she looked like that, and the fear she displayed set Magnus on edge. “What’s wrong?” He said. Julia continued to tend to his eye with one hand, but the other she put on the side of his face, ruffling through his sideburns.

“Magnus,” she said, as if it was the most important word in the world, “we need you around. You need to not-” her voice broke for a second, and it shattered Magnus because she was always so strong. “You need to not get yourself hurt or even killed on accident-or on purpose.”

“Wait, what?” Magnus exclaimed. He readjusted himself so quickly that the ice fell off of his eye. “I’m not-i’m not gonna kill myself, Jules!”

“Tell me this-if there was a sword in front of a stranger, would you take the hit?” If he was smart Magnus would have thought this through, would see the pain on Julia’s face. Instead, he barreled on.

“Of course, but that doesn’t mean-”

“Magnus, you’re important. You know that, right?” And now Julia was angry and Magnus didn’t understand why. He did what he’s good at. He was helping people-why was she so mad?

“What did I do wrong?” He asked, and she stopped. She breathed in deeply, and moved in.

“Can I hug you?” Julia muttered, and Magnus quickly filled the space between them. He didn’t know what they were yet, he doubted she did, either, but he knew he loved her.

“I’m not mad,” she whispered into his neck. “I’m just worried that you’re gonna get hurt one day.”

“I can handle it,” he said.

“I know,” she said as she looked up at him. “But you don’t have to.”

***

It was a month since the revolution ended, and three weeks since Magnus Burnsides became the happiest man on Earth.

Julia, she knew everything about Magnus-even the things that he hid, that he didn’t know about. She was so smart. She would translate everything for him: what people in town meant, when Steven was having a bad day and needed some space, even the things about himself that Magnus had never noticed.

She got worried about him, when he rushed in. When he got hurt. There was a battle-the second to last battle of the rebellion-where Magnus had been badly attacked trying to protect one of the younger members of the revolution. He woke up ten hours later in the base with their clerics nearby sleeping and Julia gripping his hand and planning their next strategies. When she saw he was awake she kissed him and then told him six important words: _Don’t you dare do that again._

So he didn’t. It hurt, but he focused on himself, tried to let others take the damage thrown to them. And then the war was over, and there was no need to worry. There was no more damage to take for someone else.

Julia was still worried about him, though.

She had surprised him with whiskey and a night just to the two of them.

“What this?” He had asked.

She smiled, a little sad. “You don’t take days for yourself enough,” and like that it was decided that it was Magnus’s Night Off.

Cuddling had come up early in the conversation (this was Magnus’s night, after all) but Julia insisted that she would be the big spoon for the night. “Everyone wants to be the little spoon,” Julia said when Magnus refused.

“I’m good-you can have it,” he had replied. She had shook her head, and sat down on the bed.

“Magnus, I’m worried about you.”

That froze him. “Why? I’m doing great.”

She smiled at him, her amber eyes glittering from under her dark wavy hair and gods above he was in love. “I know you are. But you don’t care about yourself as much as you should.”

“Oh.”

It had never occurred to Magnus like that. He had always thought of himself as selfless. All he had was bravery, strength, and loyalty. He was able and willing to put his life on the line because somebody had to and it’d be better if it was someone as worthless as him- Oh.

“What do I do?” Magnus said, panic seeping in. Did he really hate himself? Yeah, he did, what did that mean for his future, for Julia, for-

“Breathe with me,” Julia said, in front of him, her hands hovering in front of his arms. He nodded and she reached over and pulled him into an embrace. “Let me pamper you. Once a month, we have a Magnus day.”

“Magnus Monday,” he laughed, and she laughed back.

Her laugh was like bells. “Exactly.”

They only got two more Magnus Monday’s.

***

With Julia gone, Magnus rushed in again. He couldn’t help it-she taught him how to live, and without her life was harder to cling to.

***

It was Taako, actually, who brought it up, once Magnus woke up.

They were sent planetside to check on some seekers who had recently gone missing. The Director thought that it could have something to do with the thrall of one of the relics. They had gotten ambushed (bad perception checks) and when the bandits rushed at Taako, well, Magnus took the hit. It was three against one, with the element of surprise on their side.

For a second, in the dimness after Magnus lost consciousness he could almost see Julia standing in front of him. She rushed to him, and whispered “I told you not to do this.”

And suddenly Merle was standing above him. “Ah, thank Pan, he’s up,” Merle yelled to someone else nearby- Taako, who was pacing back and forth, his umbrella dramatically hanging over his shoulder.

Taako turned to Magnus. “Hey jackass, don’t pull that shit again, okay?”

Julia’s words swirled in his head, drowning out his disappointment for waking up. “I’m gonna...I’m gonna try not to.”

There was a pause as Taako’s eyes met Magnus. He gave the fighter a message-ok. And then he began to ramble out loud. “Well, I don’t give a shit what you try to do, you better succeed, bubula-”

Taako continued to rant half-heartedly as Merle huffed beside him, laughing softly and side-eyeing a vine a few feet away. And Magnus smiled, because things were back to normal with the Tres Horny Bros.

***

It was four days after they get back from the mission that Magnus sat down with a bottle of whisky, a tub of ice cream, and nail polish. He steadied himself, breathing deeply, then opened the whisky. He raised it high, as if to toast something. “To Magnus mondays” he whispered to himself. It was a start.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is @infernaltwink, come cry about magnus with me!


End file.
